Religion: Up on Arms

At an oceanside retreat house in Spring Lake, N.J., five U.S. Roman
Catholic bishops assembled last week to touch up a controversial
document. According to Peter Steinfels, executive editor of the liberal
Catholic journal Commonweal, the document is "the most serious effort
the church has ever made, here, abroad, or in the Vatican, to come to
grips with nuclear war." The five bishops, led by Joseph L. Bernardin,
the new Archbishop of Chicago, spent a year taking testimony from 34
specialists ranging from outraged peace protesters to Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger. They then sent a 66-page first draft...